A Playground
It was in the studio apartment on Bellows Street that my bookcase filled with literature. On early mornings I walked into the kitchen and saw it blue eyed from the sun light passing through the painters tape around the rim of the back door window they hadn't painted and I'd see it tinted like this every morning I walked into the kitchen before work. I would soak in hot water after that. I would sit there soaking for two and three hours the water as hot as anyone could stand until the apartment walls sick from half a century of cigarette smoke would well steamed tobacco and then cry brown soot down the cracked paint of the yellow tooth walls around the rim of the tiny ceiling. I used to watch myself growing a beard in the mirror.
I would think back to the house I grew up in and how I watched myself in the mirror there while the bath tub filled before school. My face was young and round and pale and indifferent. A beard and dirty walls now. Just outside the back door was the parking lot and then the alley and across the way a playground for the catholic school children to play during recess from which I heard them scream fanatically as if they knew what they were quickly giving up.
I liked the blue kitchen and the children.
Though, the neighbors in the next apartment argued. They moved out and new neighbors arrived different then the others: a couple, young, the girl deaf, the man very large shaved bald tiny blue eyes and much teeth. They argued too and I could hear them every morning I bathed. The man however I didn't hear much. Just the inaudible grunts of a tiny deaf woman in the late morning and it peaked off until after work and even later into two and three AM but it was nothing I hadn't slept through. Though at one time it did finally happen and I woke up to the noise of a bitch being kicked in the street or some thing on fire. It was the deaf woman I realized and now I heard the man clearly. He was beating her joyfully it seemed. I layed in bed and thought about my beard, calling the police, a white fungus growing out of a mirror, killing my neighbor, the bookcase, and dead birds in the street.
I desperately wanted to go back to sleep and I was sweating.
The next night I came home late from work and he was there waiting for me standing with a lit ciggarette and his shirt off with a baseball cap on backwards seeing through me and the parking lot to the empty playground.
"Didya hear us bitchin at each other last night?"
He smiled.
I told him yes some time around 3.
"She doesn't know how loud she is man sorry."
He heard me say some thing about her being a strong woman as I walked past him into my apartment through the back door.
I didn't hear them argue that night and the next morning before work I opened the bath room window while the tub filled and listened to the children play.
I would think back to the house I grew up in and how I watched myself in the mirror there while the bath tub filled before school. My face was young and round and pale and indifferent. A beard and dirty walls now. Just outside the back door was the parking lot and then the alley and across the way a playground for the catholic school children to play during recess from which I heard them scream fanatically as if they knew what they were quickly giving up.
I liked the blue kitchen and the children.
Though, the neighbors in the next apartment argued. They moved out and new neighbors arrived different then the others: a couple, young, the girl deaf, the man very large shaved bald tiny blue eyes and much teeth. They argued too and I could hear them every morning I bathed. The man however I didn't hear much. Just the inaudible grunts of a tiny deaf woman in the late morning and it peaked off until after work and even later into two and three AM but it was nothing I hadn't slept through. Though at one time it did finally happen and I woke up to the noise of a bitch being kicked in the street or some thing on fire. It was the deaf woman I realized and now I heard the man clearly. He was beating her joyfully it seemed. I layed in bed and thought about my beard, calling the police, a white fungus growing out of a mirror, killing my neighbor, the bookcase, and dead birds in the street.
I desperately wanted to go back to sleep and I was sweating.
The next night I came home late from work and he was there waiting for me standing with a lit ciggarette and his shirt off with a baseball cap on backwards seeing through me and the parking lot to the empty playground.
"Didya hear us bitchin at each other last night?"
He smiled.
I told him yes some time around 3.
"She doesn't know how loud she is man sorry."
He heard me say some thing about her being a strong woman as I walked past him into my apartment through the back door.
I didn't hear them argue that night and the next morning before work I opened the bath room window while the tub filled and listened to the children play.